Apple Europe News Briefs - SVM Criticizes Apple Processor Switch Rumors, Father Of RISC Dies

by , 9:00 AM EDT, July 26th, 2002

SVM criticizes rumor-mongering

The announcements at the recent MACWORLD Expo still get lots of attention, as does the rumour that Apple might switch to Intel. French magazine SVM even has a special report on this.

Comments from Apple at the investors conference have been misinterpreted, SVM writes, to fit everyone's favourite conspiracy theory. Those theories range from Apple buying Motorola's semiconductor division to a wholesale switch to AMD's "Hammer" RISC chip. SVM notes that Jobs actually gave quite a lot of information on the development of the PowerPC and seemed very pleased with the performance of AltiVec. AltiVec is now seen as one of the "crown jewels" of the PowerPC architecture, with even IBM implementing AltiVec into its 750FX CPU for the Nintendo GameCube.

At any rate, rumors of Apple switching to another platform are premature, SVM concludes.

HP ends printer contract with Dell

There are other interesting tidbits from the computer world as a whole. For starters, German Computerwoche has an article on Steve Jobs' nemesis, Dell Computer.

The Texas-based computer company has come under fire from rival HP. Citing Dell's intention to enter the printer market as the main reason for the decision, HP has immediately cancelled its contract with Dell. Analysts see this as a first shot across Dell's bow in a new war between both companies. A Dell spokesperson was "surprised" by HP's decision, but confirmed that Dell does have the intention to start selling Dell-branded printers and ink cartridges by the end of this year.

RISC pioneer dies

On a sad note, MacFan notes the passing of John Cocke. Cocke is regarded as one of the fathers of the RISC chip concept. He participated in IBM's 'project 801', which resulted in the first RISC CPU. Further development yielded IBM's "Power" series of processors -which are used in high-end IBM servers- and, of course, the Mac's PowerPC "engine". Interviewed a few years ago, Cocke was very optimistic on the future of RISC processors, and predicted clock speeds of 100 GHz in the next ten years.

New product releases

German software maker Maxon has announced that it will release Cinema 4D 8.0 this autumn. (Link in German)

Also in Germany, ASH has released a German version of the DTP-style HTML-editor Freeway. It is now at version 3.5.5. (Link in German)

And, apparently not too shocked by Apple's becoming a competitor after acquiring eMagic, Steinberg has announced the next version of Cubasis. Cubasis SX, as it is called, will only run in Mac OS X and is expected to hit the shelves in the fourth quarter of 2002. (Link in Danish)

TMO offers a regular round-up of Apple-related news from Europe, courtesy of the editor of our European Desk, Tom Terryn.